Dispatch from the Future: Driving the 2020 Apple Car

We knew Apple could revolutionize the car—but we never imagined it would do it like this. Read on for our (obviously completely fictional) owner’s account of what it’s like to own the all-conquering Apple Car.

I was as surprised as anyone when I purchased an Apple Car, but after the internet consolidation of 2018–2019, Pacific Gas & Electric was among Comcast–AT&T’s first acquisitions in legacy utilities. All I had to do was bundle streaming TV and a 7G data plan with my existing electricity service and Comcast–AT&T was willing to sell me a $53,000 Car for just $899 a month on a 12-year contract.

It’s a beautiful thing, the Car. Apple eliminated those ugly cut-lines you see between the bumper and the hood and the fenders on every other car. The initial concepts did away with door handles for a streamlined look, then the designers took it even further for production, eliminating the doors altogether. The windows open automatically as you approach your Car and you just climb on in. The anti-Car folks will tell you this makes insurance more expensive, and it’s true that it’s almost impossible to get to the electronics and the drivetrain without a saw. But if something breaks while your Car is still covered under AppleCare, you just send the whole car back and start over with a new one, provided you pony up the $4999 replacement fee. It’s a good policy as far as I’m concerned. No one wants to drive a refurbished car any more than they want to hold a phone to their face after they’ve dropped it in the toilet.

At the end of the day, I bought an Apple Car because it’s the ultimate in tablet integration. I climb in and slide my 15-inch iPad 6 neatly into the dash and that’s it—my music, my contacts, and my ex-wife’s current location are all right there at my fingertips. Well, actually, that’s what I did when I bought the car five years ago. Six months after the purchase, Apple decided its proprietary connector was too big and aluminum was passé. Just last week I stacked my fourth adapter on the docking station. A three-foot cable plugs into that so I can charge my new 18-inch MacPad on the floor while I drive—or so I can still charge my tablet from the back seat when it drives.

Coming from a Toyota Prius, my learning curve for the Car was fairly steep. When I climbed through the window for the very first time I kept looking for the owner’s manual, but there wasn’t even a glove box to look in. I later learned that Apple never bothered to create a manual. That’s how you know Apple still has the magic touch. My friend bought a brand-new 2025 Chevrolet Zap last week and it still comes with a 200-page owner’s manual.

If I have a problem now, I go see the good folks at the Genius Bar. There are a few quirks, though, that Apple has never bothered to correct. Early on there was the hysteria over radio reception. You can’t get a single streaming radio station if a full-grown adult lays spread-eagle across the roof. Apple waited for the storm to pass on that one, then claimed it fixed the issue with a software update. It’s a lie. There’s still no reception if you straddle the shark-fin antenna while lying face down.

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The itDrives debacle was far worse. We were promised the absolute best cameras married to the most reliable operating system running the most intelligent self-driving app, and the system worked great at first. I spent the first two weeks circling the Bay Area without once swiping the steering pad. Then we attempted a weekend trip to see family in Fresno. As soon as we were east of the I-5, itDrives refused to go any farther. Turns out the guy in charge of Apple Maps had never heard of Central California.

Several years on, the Car still feels novel to me, but there’s a whole generation that doesn’t know anything different. My son turned 15 in July and I had planned to teach him to drive in our 10-year-old Toyota Corolla. That idea lasted exactly two blocks, right up until we sailed through the first stop sign. “Too many pedals,” Brian said. Honestly, I think he’s right. No one ever confuses the accelerator and the brake when there’s only one pedal.

Accelerator pedal. I catch myself using antiquated terms like that one all the time. In the Apple Car it’s a speed pedal. Squeeze through 10 percent of the pedal’s travel and the car hums to 10 mph. Push it to the floor and you’re soon floating down the freeway at 100 mph. Lift off and the car comes to a stop. It’s amazing that in 150 years the old-tech automakers never figured out something so obvious. Acceleration and deceleration rates are baked into the software, and the cameras always keep an eye out for emergencies. Only one thing nags at me: While I can’t prove it, I could swear that every time my car downloads an OS update, it accelerates just a little bit slower than the last time I drove it.

Really, though, I feel at ease knowing that Apple’s Car is the safest place for my kid to learn to drive. A Tesla crashes like any other car. The big white pillow that blasts out of the steering wheel only adds to the shock and trauma of an accident. The Car lets you know that a crash is imminent at least a minute before impact. A cheery beach ball inflates from the center of the steering wheel and Siri chimes in that the steering program has been made unresponsive. Crashes happen all of the time, and I want my son to know that a crash isn’t a big deal. We care about the people we love in this family, not the objects we own.

Only he better not crash our Car. We have another 82 months left on the contract.